Let Your Winners Run!!!

I guess what I'm finding is that I find it easier to cut my losses than to let my winners run. Today I had a couple of trades that would have worked out quite nicely had I been a little slower to take profits.

The first was in TIF.



See that 3rd bar? The big green one? I got short there, at around $40.36, 500 shares. I covered 100 at $40.15, 100 at $40.08 and 100 at $40. The first 200 were by design. I'm trying to boost my size again and the way I'm working at it is by selling 400 or 500 and then covering 100 or 200 when I'm 20 cents in the money or so. Then, I hope to be more comfortable holding the other 300... to let them run.

So in the case of TIF, I could have just put my remaining 200 shares up at $40.37 and been assured of a winner on the day. Instead, I covered my remaining 200 at around $39.65. So I made a couple hundred in the stock, but I could have made another easy point on those 200 shares, thereby doubling my profits without any pain, had I just held.

Same problem with TUP, a trade that I nonetheless feel really good about.



$38 was a fairly important level in TUP on Friday. This morning, I noticed it couldn't really gain much traction off the open and had a very bearish second candle. Volume was picking up as it slowly head down, so I short a small amount, 200 shares in anticipation of it breaking the $38 level.

When it did, I added another 300 shares to my position at around $37.85. So far, so good. I wanted to add more, but the stock never really got up near $38 again. However, again, I covered early. By 11:00 I was out of 400 of my 500 shares at around $37.50. I let that last 100 run another quarter until I was too anxious to "lock in" that profit and covered at $37.27.

Again, the stock dropped from that level. It would have been very easy to hold and cover the entire position well south of $37.

LET YOUR WINNERS RUN!

Anyway, other than that, I thought the day was really slow. We only traded 1.3 billion shares on the NYSE today... that's like holiday levels of trade. Not sure why it was so slow. But I'm happy that I'm disappointed at myself when I'm making $100. It beats the hell out of being disappointed at myself for being down $100.

I know that as long as I keep staying green that the bigger days will come. They always do.

Here's the stats:
P&L, $105
Best, TUP, $320
Worst, VMC, -$165

9200 shares traded.
12 stocks traded. 5 winners, 7 losers.